Young Wealth: Trade Secrets From Teens Who Are Changing American Business by Jon Swartz; Rooftop Publishing, 165 pages, $14.95.

HOW TO CREATE LUCK

Entrepreneur Ben Casnocha describes three ways to be lucky:

• "Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible. Read books no one else is reading. Talk to people no one else is talking to. That's luck. That's randomness."• "Every time luck doesn't go my way, I believe a piece of good luck is right around the corner."• "Trick yourself. Self-deception is essential to maintain high self-esteem. It's okay to take more credit than you deserve, in your own mind, for successes. It's okay to think you can outwork and out-passion anyone who competes with you. Stay humble on the outside, but consider yourself unstoppable on the inside."

Casnocha schmoozes with executives and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley in the morning and goes to high school in the afternoon.

Casnocha's company, Comcate, markets software he designed for local governments. It started as a project for Ben's sixth-grade tech class at a private school in San Francisco. Comcate now has annual revenue of around $750,000 and 50 customers in small and midsize cities in several states.

Swartz ends each profile with a snapshot, including age, business, city, their biggest influence and a commentary on how they do it.

How many teens start or run businesses is not certain, but they seem to be a growing niche. In 2005, 188,000 self-employed people in the USA were under 21, compared with about 142,000 in 2000, according to Brian Headd, an economist in the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy.

Tech advances (like the Internet) make it easier to start and run businesses with little start-up capital. And nearly 1,800 colleges and universities offer courses in entrepreneurship, Swartz writes. "The liberating tonic of self-employment not only gives teens control of their jobs; it also sharpens the competitive spirit in the United States. Perhaps tech teens are a key cog in the American economic machine, a hidden salvation in an ever-changing global economy."

These profiles are inspiring on many levels, for teens and parents alike. Swartz warns, however, that young entrepreneurs face a "phalanx of personal and professional obstacles."

Early success is intoxicating. It can lead some to reject feedback and make it harder to learn in a corporate environment, he writes.

Swartz's best portraits emerge from the cyberworld, an arena he covers for this newspaper, but he tosses into the mix a rising country singer, a model and a sports journalist, too. They have in common, however, savvy use of the Internet.

Kids such as e-commerce mogul Sean Belnick, 19, founder of BizChair.com, now take in six-figure salaries while attending high school and college, Swartz writes.

Or consider Graham Bensinger, 19, a sports journalist from Ladue, Mo. He has a weekly national radio show, contributes to ESPN, writes a column for ESPN.com and has a William Morris Agency rep to sort out his deals. His advice:

• "Hard work is the key to success. If you work hard, opportunities will present themselves."

• "Everyone has dreams. The difference between those who are successful and those who aren't is whether you have the guts to follow them. Only use the doubters as motivation."

Then, too, there's Robin Liss, 22, founder and CEO of several websites, including CamcorderInfo.com, a site that draws four hundred thousand unique visitors per month to her reviews. Known as a "gadget guru" on CNN, she says: "I would never call myself an expert at anything. I'm always learning, always growing and trying to find new and better ways of doing things. In my pursuit to learn, I'm always looking for new teachers."